Swashbuckler - Code of the Grimhunt (Patreon)

Sometimes a mind is touched by otherworldly powers, and it goes bad. If that mind belongs to a combatant who already dances around the battlefield with rakish flair, then you get a Grimhunt swashbuckler.

The Grimhunt won last month's poll, and was challenging. I knew it would be flavored around the Consumption discipline; a creepy hunter-by-shadow fits very well with a Dex- and Cha- based martial, and there wasn't a swashbuckler sub yet that lent itself especially well to stealthy approaches. But finding room to fit a psionic power in was quite tricky.

Design-wise: Mind Hunter is our basic flavor here. Mindsight's quite powerful to be handing out at level 3, but with a 15-foot range, its applications are still reasonably limited. Psionic Predator is our playstyle definer, granting Mind Leech, and the ability to combo it with attacks. There is a little bit of economy here between psi points and panache, which is a thing that needs balancing, but powering Mind Leech directly with panache was really hard to do without making something either monstrously strong, or with very annoying math. Night Stalker is a mild defensive boost that can also become offense in a pinch. Psychic Siphon is a big boost to panache income, and Psychic Rend is a situationally-useful deed but not a big power spike. Adaptive Predator pulls in a big piece of Consuming Mind Psion flavor, letting the Grimhunt rummage around in their victims' memories. And Neural Lash is our capstone, letting you link your mind to another creature and prey on their skill more directly.

As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback on Discord! And I'm also active in Kibbles' discord, if you want to track me down there.